The Paddy Casey Podcast [July 2007]

Ahead of the release of his third album Addicted To Company, I spoke to Paddy Casey in July of 2007 and found out about his time in LA and how he wrote his way through a west Clare winter.

SUNDAY evening and the shagging electricity has gone — again. It’s been more than six winter weeks now, stowed away in this tiny hamlet on the very edge of the Atlantic and now, for the third time in those long weeks, a winter storm has knocked out the power.

Unperturbed, Paddy Casey feels blindly for the carefully stowed candle and the matches. Eureka, and a quick flick returns the room to its former glow. Returning to his snug beside the window, the tempest outside serves as a fitting backdrop. A gentle strum from his guitar, and the skin and bones for Paddy Casey’s latest album, Addicted To Company (Part 1), begin to take shape.

Perhaps this isn’t exactly how it went down, but when Paddy Casey returns to Kilkee next week, a brand spanking new album in his back pocket, he will be completing a creative journey that began in Lahinch more than two years ago.

“I spent a bit of time down in Lahinch, but it would have killed me if I’d stayed down there much longer. I had very little else to do down there, other than drinking and playing. You have the surfing areas which are nice but I’m not much of a surfer.

“I would have been working on songs in Lahinch. I’m sure there are songs on this record that would have been written in Lahinch but it all becomes a bit of a mash because there are bits written in lots of places.

“I think this album is a little closer to what I’d have done if I had more time to record the other two albums. I definitely aimed for a particular direction, and I seem to have hit it — I’m not really sure though.

“When we toured the Living album, I was going, ‘this is great, people are dancing, I want this to

continue’. So for this album I definitely wanted a song that was like ‘Saints and Sinners’, something to keep it up for the gigs.”

Unlike previous recordings, Casey spent a long time in the studio recording this album, the majority of it being put down in America.

“I recorded the guts of it in LA, at least half of it. It was funny, going over there for the first few days, it did feel like a totally different experience — everything was different, the culture, everything. But, when it actually got down to it, we were recording in a room that looked like it could be somewhere off the Naas Road — we might as well have been in Dublin. We were sitting in that room all day so it didn’t matter where we were.

Clare People Interactive

Clare People Interactive (CPI) was founded in the late month of 2006 by West of Ireland journalist Andrew Hamilton. The project was a step into the unknown; an attempt to bridge the gap between the old world of print media and the emerging new technologies.At the core of the CPI was a long running series of interviews with Irish and international artists, mostly musicians. These interviews, which appeared first in print and then as free audio podcasts, attempted to provide a richer experience of the subject than had previously been possible in print media. The focus was always on the artist and the work - with journalistic intrusions rare and usually (mercifully) brief.Between 2006 and 2010, Clare People Interactive grew to just shy of 150 audio podcasts. There was also a dozen video podcasts - the Gonzo Nation series - as well as hundreds of album and gig reviews - which have all, sadly, been lost to the Internet.This archive contains the original 146 audio podcasts in their original format. As the series grew, the audio quality and (hopefully) the standard of journalism grew with it.Clare People Interactive is the work of Andrew Hamilton. Eternal thanks to John O'Rourke for his technical support, Noel Barrett for designing the many logos and to Gerry Collison for his optimism and support.This, is Clare People Interactive.